Although it’s been awhile since this collection was recommended to me, I can’t get these creation stories out of my head. During a time of erasure, they were shared by some NW indigenous communities with the goal of preservation because “These stories are valuable.” Tribe members have performed them for generations; Mourning Dove (Quintasket) spent much of her life trying to record them; New audiences might want to hear another culture’s representation of a certain creature and the history of the land. Even in this adapted form, some of the legends here are violent and abrupt, others humorous and hopeful, many of them either surprising or somehow familiar, but they all double as a captivating and complex example of morals and aspects of tradition.
